The act of taking a single (often minor) action or trait of a character within a work and exaggerating it more and more over time until it completely consumes the character. Most always, the trait/action becomes completely outlandish and it becomes their defining characteristic. Sitcoms and Sitcom characters are particularly susceptible to this, as are peripheral characters in shows with long runs.

Note that the key to this trope is in how the process is a gradual thing, the character starts relatively normal with a few quirks, the quirks become more prominent and then gradually become the character. If it is simply about how the character is different early on before the writers know what to do with them, that is Characterization Marches On.

In general, comedies, especially SitComs, fall into the trap of Flanderization because Character Development is far less important than Rule of Funny. Given a choice between getting a laugh or moving the story forward, getting the laugh will almost always take priority.

Flanderization doesn't have to be a bad thing - sometimes it can be used to expand on a background character's personality when they are brought to the foreground, or make an otherwise bland character stand out more. It can even be beneficial on a cast-wide scale — a comedy that has a cast full of zany, outsized personas will probably be funnier than one full of nondescript straight men.

See also Never Live It Down for when the character is more associated with some action or event than the character actually changing, and Unintentionally Sympathetic, when realistic quirks are mishandled by the writers. Compare/contrast Early Installment Weirdness (as it applies to characters), with early depictions of a character being different from later ones simply because the producers hadn't figured out what role they should play in the story.

A character is not dumb, just lazy and/or hates studying, but is turned later into straight dumb.

Intelligence

A character is intelligent, but in realistic levels, later he/she becomes extremely intelligent, being comparable to many famous scientists, or even exaggerated to the point of being able to build wondrous gadgets at his/her house.

A greedy character has a kind side and often chooses what is more important instead of riches, but later, becomes even greedier to the point that he even sacrifices friends and family just for a few more pennies.

A character who is a collector who enjoys building his or her collection turns into a hoarder whose life revolves around filling his or her house with an excessive number of trivial possessions.

A Token Evil Teammate will do increasingly evil things to make up for teaming up with the good guys all the time, and the good guys will become less and less disgusted by these actions.

Annoyance

A character is kind of annoying but only infuriates those who are constantly nervous, later becomes incredibly annoying to almost anybody, to the point that the audience empathizes with those whom the character infuriates.

The creators discover a character is not well liked by the fans, and thus decides to hurt and humiliate the character in increasingly horrifying ways, despite the fact that the character had really done nothing wrong in recent episodes.

Likes/dislikes

A character has a favorite food like many people have, but later the love for that food is brought up all the time and the character becomes enamored with it to the point of addiction.

Conversely, if there is a food or something else that the character doesn't like, their distaste for it will increase over time, and the character will become more and more of a magnet for improbable situations in which the disliked thing cannot be avoided.

A mischievous character who loves playing lighthearted practical jokes on people turns into a sociopathic bully whose practical jokes become needlessly mean-spirited and sometimes violent.

A character is foul-mouthed, but only curses when the situation calls for it, like being angry or scared, or just to sound cool, but later, the character can't complete a single phrase without a curse word.

A nervous character who finds certain situations and things scary turns into an extreme coward who freaks out at the mildest creepy things and has multiple phobias.

Other Examples:

Regis from TDA Bank. At first he started off as a person who would question what the bank offers. Now? He doesn't know what electronic banking is and calls Kelly every hour about his balance.

Fan Works

Cross Marian of D.Gray-Man suffers this. He's shown to have his Jerk Ass moments, but the manga also shows sympathetic sides to him as well, and that he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at worst. But the anime flanderized his jerkasss qualities with filler episode 27: My Mentor, General Cross, and due to cancellation, what more depth we do see of his character is cut off. Then fandom, mostly people who haven't read the manga, will flanderize Cross' flaws to a point where there's nothing good about him, and he's basically pure evil and completely heartless, sometimes abusing Allen for no reason, even being a rapist. His Chivalrous Pervert quality is flanderized to the point he's completely horrid to women.

Actually invoked by the Aperture Scientists in Blue Sky. In their Brain Uploading of Wheatley, they deliberately messed with his personality so that the part of him that produced terrible ideas would be dominant and would override other aspects of his personality in a crisis.

Invoked in Eugenesis by Sygnet, a Decepticon scientist, who sees Galvatron as having the worst parts of Megatron's personality amplified a thousand-fold.

In general, the InuYasha fandom takes Inuyasha's appreciation of ramen noodles and exaggerates it into full-blown addiction.

Fanon portrayals of background ponies often go through this in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom. For example, Lyra was originally just a pony who sat in a humanoid pose. Eventually fans began seeing her as being a fan of the fictional species called humans (or sometimes just liking a show called "My Little Humans" and poking fun at the series' Periphery Demographic). Eventually the joke went from "She's a little weird and likes humans a lot" to "She sees herself as a human in a pony body and wants to travel to Earth". Within a few years her obsession with human eclipsed her other fanons, like being Octavia's sister or being a musician. Fans have begun to dial back on it though, thanks to the Lower-Deck Episode jossing her human obsession while giving fuel to the fire of her and Bonbon being an item.

Twilight and friends are reduced to their basic personality traits. For instance, Applejack’s only personality trait in the story is her accent. Rarity is only defined by her love of fashion, is portrayed as constantly forcing makeovers on those who don't want them and whining quite a bit. Pinkie Pie is portrayed as being so annoying that even her friends groan at her and is also shown to be a bit of a crybaby.

Even his own characters aren't immune from it. In his first appearance, Ace Ray does hate Starfleet but has other priorities such as his sister. By the time of My Brave Pony: Star Fleet Magic III, all he does is rant about his hatred of Starfleet and hates his sister.

A great many Naruto fics will do this to one character or another. The most universal tends to be Mizuki who goes from a Reasonable Authority Figure that's secretly The Mole to a Jerkass that blatantly sabotages Naruto at every turn (including but not limited to: burning his books, putting him in the hospital during a sparring match, and outright trying to kill him publicly).

The same thing tends to happen to Hiashi in many fanfics; it's rare to find a fic that doesn't portray him as an emotionally, verbally, and in some cases physically abusive father to Hinata (Team8 in particular has him as all three, with the physical abuse being heavily implied) and a massive prick in general. However, Team 8's Hiashi isn't really an example of flanderization, as the story is an AU fic where a change in the past affected Hiashi in the present for the worse, but the nail responsible for him being the way he is hasn't been completely explained in story. Currently, only the member's of the author's forum know the full story.) In the series proper, while he does start out as a rather stern clan head who's disappointed with Hinata's ninja prowess, it's revealed pretty soon afterward that his sternness is actually a mask to hide his guilt over the death of his twin brother (Neji's father) years earlier, and he is in fact a Reasonable Authority Figure whose relationship with Hinata and Neji improves over time.

Finding fic that doesn't portray Karin as an obsessive rapist and incompetent kunoichi is... difficult, to say the least. Canonically, she has a crush that she tries to keep under wraps in public, never even tries to kiss Sasuke without his permission, let alone rape him, and is referred to as the kunoichi that Sasuke, of all people, has acknowledged as "the strongest."

In Fate/stay night, Gilgamesh is an egocentric bastard who tries to commit genocide because he doesn't think humanity is worthy of his rule who has attraction to Saber because she keeps resisting him. In Teach Us, Gil Sensei! said character is reduced to a whiny Saber fanboy willing to become a gym teacher just so he afford an apartment. Of course, being a comedy fic this is all Played for Laughs.

In most ''Gunge Male Celebs'' series of stories, all of the celebrities that the narrative humiliates are flanderized to the point where they become arrogant Jerkasses, with no redeeming qualities on them, giving the narrative reason to humiliate them, and call them things like 'foolish oafs'.

In a simular fashion, Tellygunge (the user himself) tends to flanderize celebrities. For example, Inoneof hisstories, both traits of Holly Willoughby and the Kardashians are affected, the latter being portrayed as people who threaten others with lawsuits when things don't go their way (hell, it pretty much results them in any story they appear in, what with them saying 'lawyer' or 'lawsuit' constantly), the former getting gunged at the end.

"Crow Syndrome" is a phrase used in the MSting community referring to over-exaggerating Crow's tendency to make slightly off-color jokes to the point where his main purpose in MSTings is to make naughty jokes and get yelled at by Joel/Mike. Would be MSTers are encouraged to use Crow Syndrome sparingly, if at all.

Genderswapped Nations flanderizes every character, whether or not they're canon or prominent to the plot. Most glaring of all of the flanderizations is Romano, however, as it is shown that he can be scared away from Germany's house by a scarecrow dressed up as France, and he can easily be coerced to run menial errands for people if bribed with pizza. Not to mention, America's gender bend and Prussia have an argument consisting primarily of "The cool hero says yes!" and "The awesome me says no!" which continues for a solid half an hour of in-fic time, which is an extreme flanderization of both of their canonical personalities.

Estee's Triptych Continuum features a kind of In-Universe version of this with falling into the mark, an extremely common psychological disorder among ponies where the pony allows their special talent to dominate their lives to the point where there is nothing outside the mark.

And turned horrifyingly Up to Eleven in A Mark Of Appeal, with the discovery of a disease that amplifies the mark magic until it renders the pony unable to do or think of anything that is not the exercise of their talent.

Films — Live-Action

Happens to several characters in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. Dave Clifton goes from a fairly unremarkable provincial DJ who Alan made nasty jokes about his alleged alcoholism to, to gleefully and openly recounting his experiences with booze, cocaine, heroin and prostitutes. Lynn, previously barely mentioning her Christianity, suddenly becomes notably more openly religious. Curiously, Alan himself undergoes the opposite, becoming less distinct and more general a character in the movie.

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger was originally a dark, scary supernatural killer with a twisted sense of humor. But starting with the third film in the series, Freddy's humor began taking center stage. His quips and killing tactics also became cheesier with each subsequent installment. Freddy was fully Flanderized by the end of the series (Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare), having become a campy, pun-spouting parody of his former self. This version of Freddy has been likened to an evil Bugs Bunny. The character was returned to his dark/scary roots in the 1994 film Wes Craven's New Nightmare. However, this film takes place outside of series canon; it's also not the "real" Freddy, but an ancient demon who adopted Freddy's persona. The 2010 ''Nightmare''reboot featured a serious, darker Freddy. But "Reboot Freddy" has not supplanted Robert Englund's version as the "official" Freddy Krueger in popular culture. So the "real" Freddy is still campy as ever, per his most recent canonical appearance (2003's Freddy vs. Jason).

Similarly, while few would consider the Leprechaun films masterpieces, the first film at least was a straight slasher movie with some comic relief. Even then, most of the humor were either sight gags or rather crude puns. By the second installment the series started amping up the humor and self-awareness to the point where it overtook the horror elements. In later sequels the Leprechaun impersonates Elvis and John Wayne, speaks entirely in rhyme, becomes a binge drinker and pot smoker, and most egregiously, raps.

Angela in the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang originally started out as really laid back, and in one scene where she finds out where Marcus cheated on her, she tells him to "Stay the fuck out of her life!"; later on in the movie her cursing habits are Amped Up To Eleven whereas, before that scene, she was relatively mellow.

Probably the best-remembered characteristic of Chinese detective Charlie Chan is his use of pithy "Oriental" aphorisms — a trait which comes directly from the Warner Oland film adaptations, and which were the only aspect of those adaptations that Chan's original author Earl Derr Biggers himself heartily disliked. Not surprising, given that he'd explicitly created Chan as a subversion to the tired "fortune-cookie" stereotypes then popular.

Eddie Wilson in Eddie and the Cruisers started out as a serious musician who wouldn't sell out. By the end of the sequel, his only emotional response was to run away from anything that might be critical of his music.

Agent Tom Manning from the Hellboy film series. In the first movie, while not a very good field leader, he was still a competent bureaucrat; he and Hellboy butted heads but ultimately gained a bit of respect for each other, and bonded over cigars. The second movie made him almost completely incompetent, and reduced him to bribing Hellboy with cigars to keep him in line. Maybe justified by the fact that, without the professor, there is no one who can truly keep Hellboy from doing something stupid.

The James Bond franchise becomes increasingly campy over the course of its history, with increasing reliance on implausible action scenes, cartoonish villains, science fiction gadgets, Bond One Liners and loads of sex. The Roger Moore era was considered the height of the franchise's campiness, while the following Timothy Dalton films were an attempt to make the franchise darker. The campiness came back over the course of the Pierce Brosnan era. Casino Royale (2006) was specifically created to completely eliminate the campiness and return to the franchise's more realistic roots.

The Lethal Weapon series gives us Dr. Stephanie Woods, who, in the first film was a competent psychologist with legitimate concerns about Riggs' stability. By the third film, she was an inept, touchy-feely shrink who served as little more than comic relief. It's heavily implied in Lethal Weapon 4 that it was actually Riggs's deliberately toying with her over the course of the series that pushed her to this point.

In the original Men in Black, K is a rather stoic individual who takes his job seriously, but approaches everything with a calm demeanor, contrasting J who doesn't take the job seriously, but overreacts to everything. By Men in Black 3, K is so stoic, he is unable to crack a joke or a smile.

Happened to Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series. His French accent was originally straightforward, though A Shot in the Dark introduced odd accent-based pronunciation quirks ("beump" for bump, for example). When he revived the character in the mid-1970s, the accent was significantly thicker and the mispronunciations were more frequent ("minkey", "rheum", "leu"), etc. Other Shot in the Dark elements became Running Gags too: he donned more bizarre disguises with each film, and Cato's attacks grew increasingly destructive, as did the slapstick in general for the whole run of films. However, this went over like gangbusters with audiences and it didn't violate Clouseau's basic character, making it one of the less destructive examples of Flanderization on this list.

In the first Rush Hour movie, Chris Tucker's character (whose Butt Monkey status stems from his Cowboy Cop tendencies alienating everyone around him) is actually a fairly competent detective, but simply not as combat effective as Jackie Chan's character. In the sequels, his character's competence is completely jettisoned, he becomes a classic Small Name, Big Ego, and much Uncle Tomfoolery ensues.

Yoda's diction for the most part simply swapped nouns and verbs in certain situations in a manner similar to some Earth languages. It also appears that he may have been doing this intentionally just to get on Luke's nerves; once Luke figures out who he is he starts speaking somewhat normally for the rest of his screen time. This was exaggerated in pop culture, leading the writers of the prequels to make up lines such as "Not if anything to say about it, I have!"

While C-3PO clearly wasn't as brave as R2-D2 and could express fear, in the original film he was still capable of self-sacrifice, even urging Luke to abandon him after 3PO had been badly damaged by the Sand People. Later, when he was cornered onboard the Death Star by some Storm Troopers, he managed to successfully bluff his way past the Troopers ("They're madmen! If you hurry you might catch them."). He also felt grief for Luke and the others when he thought they were dying. In The Empire Strikes Back, he's Flanderized into a total coward, unable to think about anything but himself, and frantically advocating surrender when the Falcon is being chased by Imperial Destroyers.

The Trade Federation Battle Droids were originally introduced as mindless animatronic soldier drones. They were just human enough to be used for slapstick, but were still inhuman enough to be mildly menacing. As the decade wore on the writers slowly morphed them into a big goofy gang of cowardly Harmless Villains.

The Matrix: Sunglasses and long coats. In the first film they actually took a relatively realistic approach to them: Neo and Trinity wear them in order to hide their belts of weapons from the security guards in the Agent's office block and then immediately ditch them before commandeering the helicopter. Even Morpheus has lost them by the time he is captured by Smith. You will note that after these points we never see any of the main characters wear them again until the closing scene with Neo flying away. Come the sequels and everyone is wearing sunglasses and/or a long coat in more or less every single scene throughout the movie even when it makes no sense such as when holding a mission briefing in a darkened room.

Dumb and Dumber: Harry and Lloyd. In the original, they were stupid but had some common sense and their own individual personalities. In Dumb And Dumberer When Harry Met Lloyd, their stupidity is pretty much their main personality trait, if not their only personality trait!

In Major League, Roger Dorn was a veteran ballplayer who was a superstar in his prime, and even at the tail end of his career had plenty of skills and talent left. He's just stopped applying himself, coasting on his past and slacking off in the field to avoid injury limiting his options during upcoming contract negotiations (thus not making the plays he should be making). Jake Taylor calls him out on his attitude and behavior, and how his lackadaisical play is spoiling things for the younger players who may be getting their only shot, while also reminding him that he used to be a great player, eventually leading to him straightening out and playing like the star he is. Come Major League II, Dorn is whiny, incompetent, and is presented as a complete joke of a player, whose announcement that he's reactivated himself is met with annoyance by his teammates.

Jay and Silent Bob received quite a bit of flanderization over the course of Kevin Smith's The View Askewniverse film series.

Jay became wilder, stupider and more perverted. In the original Clerks, he's shown conversing with a girl quite casually (despite insulting her when she arrives) whereas in the later films like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back he can barely talk to a girl without it being completely sex related. The number of F-bombs he dropped also seemed to increase with each film.

Silent Bob's characterisation actually went back and forth between films. He spends most of the original Clerks smoking cigarettes and didn't really do anything until towards the end where he dances with Jay and later gives the convenient store clerk, Dante, some helpful relationship advice (this would later become the defining trait of the character). The following film Mallrats however portrayed a much sillier Bob, where he partakes in some goofy antics and is much more expressive. Chasing Amy went back to the more reserved and deadpan Bob from Clerks, Dogma did a mixture of the two personalities and in Strikes Back and Clerks II he was goofy again.

Ron Weasley starts off fairly average if slightly lazy and only seems to get lazier - and dumber - as the series progresses, though every now and then he manages to snag a moment of average competence. It probably didn't help that the film adaptations tended to play him up as being a lot dumber than Harry or Hermione, to the point that he often came across as The Load - and then became or at least bordered on being The Load in the books as well.

Hermione's intelligence undergoes this too. Initially in book's 1 and 2 she is merely very clever; able to learn at a slightly faster pace and work at a slightly higher level to everyone else. By the end of the series there is literally not a single spell or potion she is ever mentioned at having failed at, although admittedly, Harry is repeated shown to best Hermione in the topic of Defense Against the Dark Arts. The only time she ever comes close to being overshadowed in a subject, other then DADA, is when she is up against the Half-Blood Prince in Potions Class, and even then it's only because she refused to deviate from the official instructions.

All the characters were Flanderized, actually, to a lesser extent. Cassie was the most notable (other than Rachel) - she goes from a slightly more moral person than the others to someone who couldn't stand to kill Visser 3. Note that her Flanderization was mostly reversed after Book 45.

Jake was noticeably Flanderized as well - his leader angst goes from mild to extreme, until the last book, at which point he feels like Tom and Rachel's death was his fault and becomes clinically depressed.

The Flanderization was, really, the point. The war took whatever aspect of their personalities was most useful to the fight (bloodlust, strategizing, manipulating people, etc.) and forced them to exaggerate it until it ate the rest of their lives.

Anita Blake suffers from this in regards to Anita's sex life and sexually-fueled magical powers, to the point where the longest book in the series to-date barely managed to get out of the bed, to say nothing of the bedroom.

While she was originally just an aversion of the Model Minority stereotype, Claudia Kishi, despite being in eighth grade for about ten years, eventually gets to the point where she can't even spell her friends' names — or her own! Despite being able to spell them perfectly well in seventh grade, mind. Most of the other girls' quirks (Kristy's bossiness, Dawn's environmentalist soapboxing, Mallory's geekiness, and Jessi's anxiety about her race and dancing skills) suffered this to some degree, as well.

Margo Pike's motion sickness. In Boy-Crazy Stacey, Margo almost gets car-sick on the way to Sea City but feels better once she moves to the front seat. Somehow, this turned into pretty much her only character trait, to the point where it was surprising she could walk down the street without getting sick.

There's also Willikins, who started out as Standard Issue Butler #48592, and then his combat skills were established in Jingo and his street-fighting past in Thud!. By Snuff a lot of his lines revolve around his ability to kill anyone with anything sharp, and he doesn't even bother to put on the Jeeves impression.

Granny Weatherwax's first appearance has her as a very competent witch (her Wizard Duel with the Archchancellor of Unseen University ends in a tie), but she isn't portrayed as being anything out of the ordinary as witches go, and doesn't receive an inordinate amount of respect. A few sequels later and she is The Dreaded, with entire species having titles for her that basically translate to "Stay the hell away!". Her stubbornness, strong will, grumpiness, and pride have all been exaggerated as well.

David Eddings' series Elenium and Tamuli have Kalten, who starts out as Sparhawk's boyhood friend, a talented knight and skilled fighter who can't use magic because their kind of magic requires being fluent in the Styric language, which Kalten can't get the hang of. As the books continue, he turns into someone too stupid to spell his name correctly, for some reason.

Kalten: I know, this stupid-looking face of mine is very useful sometimes.

Everworld. In the first book, Search for Senna, the eponymous character was a quiet, withdrawn, and somewhat strangeEmotionless Girl who had a mostly positive romantic relationship with David, and demonstrated genuine concern for others on occasions. As the books went on, her negative traits were repeatedly emphasized and expanded, though this was initially saved from being Flanderization by her character also becoming more complex and interesting. In the last two books, her goal of overthrowing the powers of Everworld and crowning herself took over her characterization, and just about all of her other personality traits were thrown out in favor of it. She became an outright sadist, a tyrannical and megalomaniac Evil Overlord who no longer cared at all for how much death or pain she caused if it got her greater power. However, this is subject to YMMV, as some have interpreted it as Senna becoming overwhelmed by the magic of Everworld, and developing a God complex.

Played for horror and incorporated as a plot point in Faction Paradox. A Space Cult Colony called the Remote colonists became sterile, and so developed technology to avoid extinction: Remembrance Tanks. You insert some biomass ready for cloning (a corpse) and get a few friends of the deceased so the machine can scan their minds for memories of the dead person, allowing the device to weave them together and form the clone's mind. This had the unpleasant side effect of making every iteration more and more stereotypical, to the degree Remote time-travelers are often disgusted and confused by meeting their future selves, often wondering if they are just that damn unpleasant.

GONE has Drake, who was much more a misanthrope and sadist than he was a misogynist. He seemed to want to torture everyone -Or most- equally, and never seemed to hold too much of a preference of who he wanted to beat up. Yes, he did hate women with a near religious conviction, but he seemed to hate men just as much. Yet in FEAR, he suddenly has some personal vendetta against all females, which is Lampshaded by himself.

This is how self-will destroys the damned in The Great Divorce. If one embraces a sin and never lets it go, it overwrites the rest of one's character, and sometimes the rest of one's self.

Total is now even more of a cartoonish sidekick figure than he was originally.

Iggy seems to be getting dumber and more childish in each book. Where in the first three he was treated by Max and Fang as one of the older kids, now he appears to have a mental age of twelve and spends most of his time with Gazzy, who admittedly has a similar outlook and personality, but is way younger than him.

Max has started to use Totally Radical slang and seems to be occasionally channeling the spirit of Bella Swan, in the author's clumsy attempt to cash in on the teen romance successes of late.

Hannibal Lecter, who first appeared in Red Dragon, was originally just a very intelligent and cultured man, whose expertise in his chosen field of psychiatry made him a particularly dangerous (and somewhat ironic) insane killer. By the (book) sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, he is quite clearly one of the greatest if not the greatest psychiatrist in the world, and by the threequel Hannibal, he's revealed to be a world-class genius in pretty much any field he sets his mind to, from Renaissance art to particle physics.

In Neal Shusterman's The Skinjacker Trilogy, Shusterman unveils a world between life and death, where your appearance is based entirely on your memory of yourself. This leads to such effects as remembering only the chocolate smudge on your face and turning entirely into chocolate, or remembering your acute sense of smell and gaining nostrils that extend to your feet. The Lawful Evil villain even encourages this trope as her thousands of followers reenact their "perfect day" every single day (when they're not fighting our protagonist). This example takes the trope in more of a literal sense, as you may have guessed, rather than the degeneration of a character's demeanor.

Some accuse the Star Trek: Vulcan's Soul trilogy of flanderizing the relationship between President Zife and Koll Azernal, with Zife being an ineffective president relying on scheming Azernal to run the government for him. It is certainly more obvious in this trilogy than in Star Trek: A Time to.... The Brains and Brawn partnership of Rehaek and Torath from Star Trek: Titan is flanderized by this trilogy, too.

The novel Before Dishonor essentially Fladerizes Worf, Seven of Nine, and Admiral Nechayev, presenting them in a surprisingly one-dimensional way, taking their various social flaws (Worf's aggressive stoicism, Seven's cold precision, Nechayev's impatience and sharp tongue) and blowing them out of proportion. Or so some readers argue.

In the Star Wars Expanded Universe nearly everything mentioned in the Star Wars movies as a side-note is turned by the Expanded Universe into the main characteristic of whatever subject.

Apparently all Corellians find statistical analysis abhorrent, due to the method in which Han Solo told C3PO to shut up in The Empire Strikes Back ("Never tell me the odds!").

"You look strong enough to pull the ears off a gundark." The Clone Wars had its gundarks modeled with ridiculously huge ears. The explanation for one of the designers was "We know about the Gundarks that they have huge ears, so they have to be visible".

Just about every Sith falls victim to this at some point or another, especially as one moves further away from their original appearance. Most notably, Revan.

In Karen Traviss' early works the Mandalorians/Clones were badass and the Jedi were somewhat clue-less/misguided. Cue later works where the Mandalorians are perfect at everything and the Jedi are basically evil hypocrites.

Most species with a single mention in the movies experience this treatment. All Hutts are crime lords, all Wookiees go berserk, all Bothans are spies, all Trandoshans are bounty hunters, all Rodians are more bounty hunters, all Gand are still more bounty hunters, et cetera. One can find exceptions, but source material states this as the rule.

In Warrior Cats, Hollyleaf starts as the smart one of the group who tries to respect the Warrior Code. By the end, she is completely consumed by the Warrior Code, freaking out if someone even mentions breaking it. This culminates with her finding out her mom severely broke the code and going on a murderous rampage.

Far earlier, in the first series, Fireheart's sister Princess is a kittypet who is curious about Clan life but wouldn't want to live that way, and who makes one or two comments on how Fireheart doesn't look like he's getting enough to eat. By the end of that series, she's become a hysterical worrywart terrified of the forest.

Music

Alice in Chains is a good example of fan-Flanderization. A lot of the band's songs (mostly by Cantrell) have nothing to do with drugs. However, when vocalist Layne Staley's addiction worsened, his songs about heroin addiction led people to believe their pre-Dirt content (Facelift and Sap) are about drugs as well, oblivious to the fact he wasn't addicted to heroin until just before Dirt. Even then, half of Dirt is not about drugs - their self-titled, however, almost entirely features songs about the horrors of drugs.

This is present Post-Staley as well. A lot of people assume all of the band's songs with DuVall are about Layne in some way now.

Jerry Cantrell, the guitarist, wrote the band's most popular songs, while Staley wrote most of the non-single tracks. However, because Cantrell wrote the more well-known songs, most people (especially DuVall supporters) assume Cantrell is the "main songwriter" - if one were to count the number of songs by each of the two, it would be almost exactly 50-50.

Popular Warp Records techno group, Autechre, began their career composing clever but still mainstream sounding techno tracks with easy to follow rhythms. However, years later, they began to compose very complex songs that eliminated the easy to understand rhythms and sound like noise to those who don't understand their unique style. To get a good example: compare their earlier albums like Incanabula and Amber, to their later albums like Confield and Draft 7.30.

A certain portion of the Avenged Sevenfold fanbase have taken to portraying the band members as thuggish gangsters - when, in actually, the band members are generally down-to-earth and friendly.

One of the main things that annoyed The Beatles about their 'Fab Four' image was how it reduced all four of them to a quick-caption stereotype which lingered — John was the 'funny' one, Paul the 'handsome' one, George the 'quiet' one and Ringo the 'normal' (i.e. less talented and klutzy) one.

Lennon in particular has been caricatured as the Genius with a capital "G" within The Beatles, almost as if he was the only intelligent, innovative and creative force within the group. This seriously underestimates the talents of the other band members and especially from the group as a unity. Furthermore most of the Beatles songs everyone sings along to were made possible by McCartney's ear for good melody. If you look at the Beatles solo careers one quickly realizes that none of the individual members were able to have a succesful solo career, except for Paul - and even his solo works have a lot of cheesy stuff in it. Most of John's solo output is pretty much hit-and-miss, except for John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine due to this tendency to write too many personal songs about his relationship with Yoko, which are quite boring for other listeners. Apart from that Lennon also made some very avant-garde tracks under influence of Yoko Ono that most people will never play more than once. In fact, the bestselling Beatles solo record of all time is All Things Must Pass by George.

In modern times, the Lennon/McCartney writing partnership tends to be oversimplified as 'Lennon wrote all the angsty, complex, rebellious and therefore 'good' songs, whereas McCartney wrote all the Silly Love Songs and fluffy album filler.' Which not only tends to unfairly deny McCartney the credit in several cases and do a disservice to several of the songs, but collapses entirely when you remember that Lennon wrote "Mean Mr. Mustard", "Norwegian Wood ", "This Boy" and "Dear Prudence" and McCartney wrote "Eleanor Rigby", "Helter Skelter", "Carry That Weight" and "Yesterday". Furthermore, half of the Lennon/McCartney songs were genuine 50:50 collaborations. Lennon did tend more towards Creator Breakdown than McCartney in later years, however.

George is thought of usually as either 'quiet' 'mystic' or 'grouchy', but people forget that George Harrison wrote "Something" and "Here Comes The Sun" from Abbey Road and "Savoy Truffle" from The White Album.

George was also characterized in works like A Hard Day's Night and Yellow Submarine as being a somber and serious mystic (especially in the latter). His son Dhani complained about this once, as his dad actually had a pretty good sense of humor. The man personally financed Monty Python's Life of Brian just because he wanted to see it and the last letter he ever wrote was to Mike Myers about how much he loved Austin Powers.

In A Hard Day's Night George is more "deadpan" than "serious", not only because it was part of his personality but also because he lacked the natural talent for comedic acting of John and Ringo. But he gets two of the funniest bits of the movie: the "what would you call your hairstyle?" joke and the scene where he's mistaken for a fashion model (both of which work well with a Deadpan Snarker).

Elvis Presley has been shamelessly Flanderized after his death by Elvis impersonators. In his youth Elvis actually was slim with boyish good looks and a pleasant smooth tenor voice with only a little shaking in it. If he was anything like most of his impersonators he would not be nearly as popular as he was in the late 1950s.

Green Day is usually characterized by detractors of their music as having all of their songs have exactly the same 3 guitar chords. While a lot of their songs from the 90's could be classified as this, ever since their 2000 album, Warning, they've been working to diversify their sound more by either mixing influences from more genres than just their usual Pop Punk, or diversifying their sound more to break away from their usual 3-chord sound. It still crops up every so often on their albums, but its lessened since the 90's.

N.W.A., on the album Straight Outta Compton, mostly stuck to an aggressive Gangsta Rap style they called "reality rap", and used quite a few songs to explicitly criticise the conditions and harrassment endured by the black population of Los Angeles. Then Ice Cube bailed, and they became ridiculously over-the-top, violence-celebrating Horrorcore with Efil4zaggin.note Basically, they went from Gangsta Rap Type 1 to Type 3.

Truth be told, many rap artist provide examples of Flanderization. In fact, they're so many examples you would need a separate page to describe them all.

Ozzy Osbourne gets this a lot from the press. For example, from the way people talk, you'd think he bites the heads off bats all the time. In truth, he only did such a thing once (completely by accident!note A fan threw it on stage, and Ozzy assumed it was a rubber prop (because what sort of deranged person would carry around a real bat?) and decided it would be funny to bite the head off; he was shocked when it turned out to be a real bat and bit him back.) and went to the hospital for a rabies shot immediately after.

Pantera. When they hit the mainstream with Cowboys From Hell in 1990, they had a then-unique "street tough" attitude but had no problem getting into some pretty emotional/sensitive topics with their music. Starting around Far Beyond Driven, however, their "toughness" was heavily Flanderized with many songs revolving around Phil's over-inflated ego, and (with a couple exceptions) the band shed all traces of angst and sensitivity.

Queen is another example of fan-Flanderization. Due to the publicity surrounding Freddie Mercury's bout with AIDS, many now assume their classic songs are about his illness and/or bout with homosexuality. Freddie was actually bisexual, and he wasn't diagnosed with AIDS until after the release of A Kind Of Magic (the band's third-to-last official album before his death).

Freddie himself has been Flanderized by his tribute acts; he had so many different looks down the years yet what does every tribute singer focus on? Yep, THAT yellow jacket.

Red Hot Chili Peppers tends to get Flanderized by detractors as always singing about California. Their jumbled lyrics also are exaggerated, as has their white boy rap which Anthony Keidis has largely avoided the past 15 years. AV Club tends to portray them as nigh-unintelligible horndogs.

They've had success with ballads, and then did so many that they inevitably became bland and predictable.

The same thing happened to Guns N' Roses. They were a basic rock band in every sense and proud of it. Then Axl Rose started to want to make more and more long rock ballads after the huge success of "November Rain" and later "Estranged" Slash, the popular lead guitar player, disagreed with this direction among other personal issues with Axl and left the band.

When Rihanna came out she sang about a variety of topics. Now it seems like all of her singles have devolved into songs about sex with the occasional love song in them.

When Weezer burst into the music scene back in 1994, they were just naturally geeky. Instead of trying to have some kind of bombastic or showy image, they were completely themselves. However, around the time the Green Album was released, their geekiness was heavily Flanderized. They all began dressing deliberately in geeky/outdated fashions, frontman Rivers Cuomo began wearing thick-rimmed glasses, etc. Plus, even though he's now well over 40, Rivers STILL obsessively sings about topics like snagging the sexy cheerleader goddess!

Taylor Swift's music appears to have devolved from the usual country themes and stories her young audience can relate to being Take Thats to her several famous exes.

Many of her album tracks have focused on other subjects than the "Taylor gets back at her exes" subject so often depicted in the media ("Back To December" places the blame solely on herself; "Mean" is about bullying; "Never Grow Up" is a celebration of childhood innocence; "Long Live" is a tribute to her backing band/stage crew/fans; songs like "Mine" and "Enchanted" show positive experiences with exes), but it seems most of the singles chosen for her albums like to emphasize her "getting back at exes"-side.

She's shown more self-awareness about this in her later albums. "Blank Space" in particular sends up the image of her as the girlfriend from hell, and other tracks on 1989 recognize Swift's tendency for crash-and-burn romance ("Style," "Wildest Dreams") or blame herself for relationship foul-ups ("I Wish You Would").

They Might Be Giants are often thought of as just writing funny or novelty songs, especially by non-fans, but their work also has a lot of serious, personal and political songs. Songs like James K. Polk and Istanbul are really in the minority, and Flansburgh writes almost no songs like that.

Mythology

Gods originally portrayed as Grey and Gray Morality or even mostly good are frequently reinterpreted as evil by competing sects/religions historically. Modern media does the same and removes the character flaws of "good" gods in retellings of mythology in order to simplify them, making them fit modern good/evil dichotomies better.

In early versions of Biblical texts, Goliath was said to be about 6 feet 9 inches tall - far above average, but still a perfectly plausible height for a human being. In later versions, Goliath was inflated to a kind a freakish giant well over 9 feet tall, taller than the tallest human ever recorded.

News Media

Sports broadcasters and a lot of radio personalities do this to themselves as time goes on. Chris Berman, Tony Kornheiser, Dick Vitale, Jim Rome all immediately come to mind as people that have particular quirks that are used more in more as they continue and their knowledge hasn't grown so they cover it up with their personality.

Canadian hockey broadcasting legend Don Cherry certainly qualifies. Originally a serious, though outspoken, broadcaster noted for wearing occasionally over the top suits, he has since morphed into a loudmouthed cranky old man who wears the most garish suits known to man.

Newspaper Comics

Dilbert has played with this trope over the years. With some characters it's played straight: the Pointy-Haired Boss went from an ordinary Bad Boss to a complete moron, while Wally went from Brilliant, but Lazy to just lazy. Alice went from being a brilliant engineer with a low tolerance for stupidity to being defined by regularly screaming and punching people (or injuring/killing them with just a look.) On the other hand, Dilbert himself has become less of a nerd and more a mixture of Everyman and Only Sane Man.

While most of the FoxTrot characters had their personas taken to the extreme at times, Andy was quite extremely Flanderized, going from a simple, caring and concerned mother to the Granola GirlMoral Guardian of the strip who serves her family earth-friendly fare like braised zucchini every meal, keeps the thermostat so low that it flash-freezes the steam from a cup of coffee, and throws a fit if she catches the boys playing a violent video game. Unfortunately, since the series became Sunday-only, there's little chance of her changing. On the other hand, before this happened Andy pretty much didn't have a personality at all beyond Mom.

Which is not to say this didn't happen to other characters, too. Jason Fox pretty much became a vehicle to show how much Bill Amend knew about physics and computers, when in the early 80s he actually wasn't this as much. He was good at school but disliked it more than everyone else. Roger Fox became Too Dumb to Live - when in the 80s and 90s, he was actually somewhat rational, and his lack of knowledge about computers, while still Played for Laughs, was actually not as laughably stupid back then as it is to a modern reader.

Garfield managed to invert this trope, then play it straight. He started out very lazy and sarcastic, but de-Flanderized into a more playful attitude by the late eighties. Over time, he's gradually shifted back into his more cynical self.

There's also Garfield's appearance and mannerisms. Originally, aside from a few human-like quirks, Garfield looked and acted like a typical cat. Overtime however, he was depicted with more and more human like behavior until it's extremely rare to see him engage in any feline activities anymore.

Played straight with Jon Arbuckle, who started as being the Straight Man and a bachelor who cared for Garfield. During the first months of 1979, he was Flanderized into being the Straw Loser compared to Garfield (with his role of the Deadpan Snarker going to Dr. Liz Wilson), and by the late 1990's, he was given a more Cloud Cuckoo Lander personality that occasionally borders on being a Man Child.

Roy's first appearances in early 1986 had him as a rather generic character whose Jokester characteristics started merely as an amusement for rudely waking up other farm animals with his bugle. The "said" amusement eventually extended from awaking up others to pulling pranks just for the mean-spirited fun. Thus, becoming The Prankster by late-1986/early-1987 we know him as today and an admittedly much more interesting character. By 1987, his Jerk Ass tendencies have already been taken Up to Eleven.

Charlie Brown, somewhat surprisingly, was a victim of this trope. In his earliest strips, he was basically the prototype of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes in that he was a wise cracking rascal who often got the upper hand. For instance, he comes across another character who is sweating and asks her if anything is wrong. "I'm hot!" she says. "You don't look so hot to me," he retorts before running away with a smirk. Another strip has him trying the patience of his friends as he fussily arranges them for a group photograph before playfully announcing that his camera doesn't actually have any film in it. As he runs away with his angry friends in close pursuit, he laughs and says, "I like to live dangerously!" In the very earliest strips, he even had girls fighting over his affections. Some vestiges of the later Charlie Brown were there in the early days with the other children being somewhat crueler to him than they were to their other peers, but it wasn't until later that his tendency to always come in last became such an overpowering part of his characterization. The doo-wop song "Charlie Brown" actually manages to combine these two divergent characterizations, with "Who called the English teacher 'Daddy-O'?" and "Why is ev'rybody always pickin' on me?"

The first two girl characters to appear in the strip, Patty and Violet, suffered heavily from this as the strip went on. Initially they were (usually) portrayed as nicer characters than the two boys (Charlie Brown and Shermy), but as the 1950s went on they started to adopt "mean girl" personas and spent most of their time together putting Charlie Brown down. At first their attitudes seemed like a response to Charlie Brown's arrogant "nobody likes me despite how great I am" streak in the mid 1950s, but by the time he had fully flanderized into a total sad sack by the early 1960s it seemed like they were just piling on him for the sake of it. By the late 1960s they had been phased out as regulars in favor of Lucy, who Charles Schulz felt worked much better as a female "bully" character.

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin, anyone? At the height of his popularity, he was simply a very tough working-class guy who was lashing out at the oppression of the modern world. Over time, the "underdog" side of his character became deemphasized and the "rebel" side became predominant, with the inevitable result that he devolved into an unabashed Jerkass - and the fans still cheered him!

The Undertaker went from being simply, well, an undertaker to becoming almost literally a god of death and the occult. Briefly reversed when he became a "biker" character for a few years. Paul Bearer was no stranger to this trope either, with his voice and mannerisms getting progressively goofier over the years. Compare this early 1991 promo to this later 1994 promo.

Inverted with Triple H, who started out as an Upper-Class Twit but eventually developed into a fairly normal, non-pretentious guy who just happens to be very rich.

Despite the negative connotations behind Flanderization, it's been said that the best gimmicks are really just exaggerations of a wrestler's real-life personality.

In The Shield, Dean Ambrose was a mercenary type character who was able to put on a normal face, but was obviously unhinged and just waiting for an excuse to hurt somebody. After The Shield broke up and he didn't bother with that normal facade anymore, he began devolving into a wacky cartoon character who frequently costs himself matches by trying to perform pointless stunts that only end up hurting himself.

The formation of Team Hell No caused the heel personas of both Daniel Bryan and Kane to be cranked up to near self-parody levels, creating some of the most hilarious moments in recent WWE history. The audience loved their interactions so much that despite being heels who hadn't changed character at all, they got the face treatment.

Radio

Birdie in The Great Gildersleeve has more nuanced characterization in early seasons, even the occasional subplot about her life outside of her job, such as the episode where she enlists Gildersleeve's help with an auction at her church. Over the years she devolves into a one-note Mammy stereotype, who only drops in to make sardonic comments on Gildersleeve's absurdity-of-the-week.

Table Top Games

One criticism of the second edition of Exalted is that it took the interesting characters from 1e and flattened them out. Especially the Deathlords - First and Forsaken Lion went from being an interesting character who wanted to take over the Underworld and didn't care about Creation to Mask of Winters v2 who wants to CONQUER AND/OR DESTROY EVERYTHING!

Thankfully, Third Edition statements seem intent on stepping away from the sins of second edition while not repeating the same things 1e did in terms of number of non-interesting or incredibly forgettable characters that both editions had. There have been a few bits released out for fiction, though if they succeeded is up tothe readers.

Interestingly, in the 2012 audio drama Chosen of Khorne, Khârn the Betrayer - who is often considered to be the most Ax-Crazy of all of Khorne's mortal servants in Warhammer 40,000 - was significantly de-flanderized. He's quite level-headed outside of combat, despite being prone to violent visions and impulses, and even refuses to harm non-combatants (so long as they don't touch his axe). It's also revealed that he's been killing off the remnants of the World Eaters' Pre-Heresy command structure in a bid to reunite the Legion under his own banner, which is hardly the MO of a frothing, myopic lunatic.

Matt Ward has been working on Flanderizing the Ultramarines from a respected puritan Chapter of strict adherents to the Codex Astartes into the absurd force of unimpeachable and unbeatablyawesomeUltrasmurfs that we all know and hate. At a stroke, he accomplished this mission for the Grey Knights with the 2011 codex, turning them from an interesting faction of thin-spread heroes fighting desperately against horrors which often threatened them and the entire Imperium into Big Damn Heroes who God-Mode Sue it up, curb stomp all your foes in tabletop, and not only are completely incorruptible, but can't be beaten. Let's see. Game Breaker units? Check. Incorruptible Pure Pureness that can survive alone in the Warp and isn't tainted by bathing in the blood of Sisters of Battle? Check. God-Mode Sue fluff? In spades. Before, Grey Knights were earlier well-liked by fans, who still used them even with a codex that was a bit out of date. Fan and critical reaction has not been positive to the changes.

The Necrons originally had vague allusions to ancient Egyptians, and their fantasy counterpart, the Tomb Kings. Come 5th Edition, they're all wearing pharaoh hats and wearing gold and blue jewelry while wielding sickle blades. Also done by Matt Ward. The players received massive Character Development in the process. That's because Games Workshop were savvy enough to control Ward's antics this time with at least two people getting the job of simply checking he does it right and stopping him when it goes awry. It worked. Of course, it also resulted in the complete destruction of the Necron's pre-fifth-edition backstory, but hey, you can't win them all.

There have been some attempts to reverse the Flanderization of the Imperium in the tie-in novels, most notably the Horus Heresy books and, of course, Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!!

A smaller one, but no less hilarious, is the Flanderization of weapons and equipments in the Codexes. Space Wolves don't have "lightning claws", they have "Wolf Claws". Blood Angels don't have Power Fists, they have "Bloodfists". And almost every single melee weapon available to the Grey Knights are now some flavour of "Nemesis Force", although that is somewhat justified due to them being previously named under the blanket "Nemesis Force Weapons", meaning that there is simply more of a distinction now rather than a full rename (unlike the aforementioned Bloodfist, which is functionally identical to Power Fists). There's also the "Artifacts" section of newer Codexes, meant to be a selection of rare weapons and equipment that can only be selected once-per-army. However the naming gets silly with the Tyranids, who have "Bio-Artifacts" that somehow grows on their body but are still "artifacts" in that they're unique in the universe.

Half-Orcs in 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons were originally just uglyanti-heroes with a bonus in Strength. By the time 3rd edition came around, they, along with their full-blooded orc kindred, became dumb muscle brutes with penalties to Intelligence as well as Charisma, thus limiting their utility as player characters to be much else.

Happened in-universe in Mage: The Ascension. During the Avatar Storm crisis, a detachment of The Technocratic Union became stranded and warped by the Void. The result? Their role in The Technocratic Union consumed everything else, including their humanity. For example, The Progenitors who wish to advance humanity by biological science now wants to grant perfection to all humans by turning them all into a soulless Hive Mind, and Iteration X who sees cybernetics as means to an end now is more machine than man. They are know known as Threat Null, and they want to go back.

Visual Novels

Happens to a number of recurring characters in Ace Attorney. The Judge seems to get dumber and become more of a Cloudcuckoolander every game, as does Gumshoe (though Dual Destinies dialed the Judge's ditziness back a little). Additionally, Larry progressively becomes more of a loser, and Wendy Oldbag becomes more of a jerkassunrepentant stalker with every appearance. Winston Payne, a prosecutor who is meek and easily intimidated, became much more arrogant while also becoming a lot more spineless in later games. His brother, Gaspen Payne, takes these traits Up to Eleven with a mix of Jerkass in the 3D installments.

In Grisaia no Kajitsu Michiru started off fairly dumb and intentionally obnoxious but had both a serious side and played a rather crucial role in making everyone get along without either killing each other or collapsing from overwork. By Grisaia no Rakuen this aspect of her has almost entirely disappeared, leaving her as nothing but the butt of jokes or someone that has no clue what's going on.

Web Animation

Noob from Battlefield Friends started out as simply making rookie mistakes and only suffering an occasional misunderstanding. However, he quickly began to get dumber and dumber, to the point where, in the second season, he barely understands even core gameplay concepts and is a complete liability to his own team.

The title character was Flanderized from The Fool into The Ditz, while Coach Z's creepiness, the King of Town's unpopularity and Bubs's tendency towards dodgy dealings were also blown out of proportion.

Strong Sad actually seemed to go through reverse Flanderization, going from a rather one-note downer to an artsy and snarkyOnly Sane Man.

Anchovie, AKA The Pizza Guy/Dude, was a young man that was deeply in love with Germaine, even though she always rejected him. He slowly became a stalker and even borderline rapist no matter how many times Germaine rejected him.

Germaine's sexual fantasies and desires were exposed more and more up to the point where Germaine relished it and became a hooker. The reboot arc eliminates the sexual shtick but later on dived right back into it and done it even harder than before.

In Kirbopher's Super Freakin' Parody Rangers series, the Rangers themselves are basic Flanderized versions of the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Meat, the Red Ranger, is an extreme sports nut who continually flexes his muscles; Willy, the Blue Ranger, is a short and stereotypical nerd; Pinky, the Pink Ranger, is definitely The Chick; and in reference to the original Black and Yellow Rangers, Mace the Black Ranger and Chan the Yellow Ranger are, well, an African-American and a Chinese girl, respectively.

Webcomics

Achewood's Cassandra "Roast Beef" Kazanzakis is an interesting case. He didn't have a personality to speak of to begin with, but around the party arc we learn that he is depressed and borderline suicidal. Shortly after that the trait began to dominate his personality, though despite this high focus on his depression he remains a rather multifaceted and interesting character.

David from Bittersweet Candy Bowl. The author originally intended him to be far less weird and wacky than his later appearances suggest.

Pretty much everyone on Bob and George. Mega Man and Bass go from being a bit ditzy and out-there to having full disconnects from reality, Dr. Light goes from being a competent though slightly uncaring scientist to being a vaguely insane drunk, Bob goes from a jerkass to an omnicidal maniac willing to destroy the universe he's in because it's there, and George goes from having a few issues with the casual use of violence to solve an issues to being a full-on Straw Pacifist.

Ethan in Ctrl+Alt+Del began as The Ditz, but moved on to Cloud Cuckoolander. More recently, he has surpassed this, and some fans are starting to suspect he is in fact clinically insane. (This may explain why Ethan made a Heroic Sacrifice to prevent a dystopian future from happening, and the entire strip is going to be rebooted.)

Szark Sturtz from Dominic Deegan was originally a master swordsman and a sadist. Following his Heel–Face Turn and admittance to having a crush on the title character, he eventually became "Szark (who is gay)", according to one forum that follows the comic.

In 8-Bit Theater, this happens to at least four characters. Black Mage goes from merely sadistic and murderous to a full-on Omnicidal Maniac, Fighter goes from being gullible and dim to being stupider than the furnishings (although given the number of times he's been stabbed in the head this may technically constitute Character Development), Bikke goes from being a bit dim to making Fighter look like a genius, and King Steve goes from incompetent and callous to being a crazed tyrant who acts entirely at random.

In El Goonish Shive, Grace's bubbly innocent side was gradually cranked up while her role in the story was reduced until she appeared to be little more than a Plucky Comic Relief character. Later arcs revealed she was putting up a bubbly front to cover some serious inner conflicts.

Punch is one of the legendary heroes that had helped the infamous Heterodyne Boys and was a competent and friendly fighter. Pretty much every story of the Heterodyne Boys has reduced him to the Butt Monkey and Comic Relief. When Jägermonsters who had met him try to fix it, the actors doing a play about him are not pleased. Amusingly, Agatha comes to realize she knows Punch and he is indeed nothing like the story-version of himself.

Klaus is the feared emperor and dictator of Europe, having tight control over it and ruling with an Iron Fist. Yet whenever he appears in stories and plays within the Heterodyne stories, he usually ends up as a bragger, a coward, a Butt Monkey or all of these. The only reason why the storytellers and actors keep their heads is because he finds them hilarious.

Grim Tales from Down Below has Grim, the personification of death, speaking in a slightly garbled manner in the beginning but it begins to get more and more difficult to understand as the story moves on.

In the Homestuck Act 6 Intermission 3 game, some of the Pre-Scratch Trolls are revealed to be Flanderized versions of their "dancestors." In particular, Cronus Ampora reflects all of the worst, most recognizable traits in the fandom's vision of Eridan (i.e. his romantic troubles, douchebaggery, and hipsterism), while Meulin Leijon is an exaggeration of how the fandom sees Nepeta (i.e. shipping and cat puns).

Aradia is an interesting case, in that the trait that's been exaggerated is one she didn't actually possess at the beginning, but picked up after coming back to life. She went from a cheerful person with a couple of minor death-fangirl quirks to spending entire scenes bearing a truly demented Slasher Smile and generally being more than a little creepy.

While Feferi and Nepeta were rather cute in their early appearances, Act 6 has them do nothing but stand around and do adorable things in the background while smiling. This is taken even further with Fefetasprite, which upped their new status as Those Two Guys by combining them together and (mostly through Roxy) painted the sprite as a "poor, sweet, precious" person who didn't deserve what happened to them.

Least I Could Do, from the same creative team, has seen this happen to most of the characters, but it's particularly noticable with Rayne, whose childlike obsession with Star Wars and other geek properties and 12-year old boy-like obsession with getting laid have basically consumed his personality, to the point where it's a surprise when he acts like an actual person, or even gets something accomplished, other than weirding people out with his desire to be Emperor or getting laid.

Richard from Looking for Group was always intended to be an Always Chaotic Evil insensitive dick and main comic relief, but his antics in later parts have done nothing but break the pace of the story.

And then Subverted when the whole thing turns out to be a coping mechanism over the fact he is forced to be evil.

Gary of Ménage à 3 manages both Character Development and flanderization, simultaneously. On his first appearance, he's a quiet geek who is still a virgin due to severe problems in dealing with women. However, he is also able to assert himself a little when pushed, and he sometimes demonstrates flashes of insight or snark. Over time, he gains much more confidence in dealing with women (presumably because he's often surrounded by attractive women who sometimes want his sexual services), and loses his virginity. However, his geekiness becomes worse, if anything — he drags a non-geek date into a comics shop at least once — and his quiet nervousness decays into total spinelessness and passivity, which the comic lampshades on occasion.

In-universe example in Ozy and Millie, where Llewellyn's horns exaggerate character traits when worn. Ozy becomes so passive he goes a whole day without moving, Millie becomes so mischievous she tries to cut off Ozy's tail, and Avery does nothing but gush about how awesome he is after putting them on.

Penny Arcade has two main characters, both pretty heavily Flanderized. Tycho went from a slightly meaner than normal, slightly smarter than normal person with some issues to a psychotic genius with an abused past and a fetish for long-necked animals like giraffes. By contrast, Gabe went from being "Not as smart as Tycho" to being portrayed as stupid enough to glue his hands to his face and not quite understand how children are made (as a 30-something man WITH A CHILD at this point). On the other hand, the characters were somewhat bland and interchangeable in the earliest days, so this ended up making them more distinguishable.

Inverted in Precocious (sort of). Most of the minor characters are introduced pre-Flanderized. Played straight, however, for Shii Ann Hu. Mentioned by trope name in the alt-text for strip 237.

Hannelore, shortly after her first appearance, mentioned that she had severe OCD. Over time, she developed more and more quirks and phobias to the point of being essentially a female Adrian Monk (she even had a "sex" dream about him, where they cleaned together in the nude). It wasn't long before they had to Hand Wave the fact that she even has piercings, and the circumstances of her first appearance — loitering in a public restroom, smoking and nonchalantly talking to a man peeing in the sink — have become absolutely inconceivable. (In fact she wins a massive bet with her wealthy mother by simply agreeing to briefly touch the toilet in a public restroom!) The problems had to be explained in Comic 1046, where Hannelore reveals she's always had these problems; it just varies by the drugs she takes.

Also from QC is Raven. At first she was an easy-to-rile goth stereotype who was not the brightest bulb. Then she reappeared as a PerkyEmo. Then she was a little bit of a Genki Girl with rare flashes of wisdom and occasional casual sex. More recently she is a flat out bizarre Cloudcuckoolander (even by the standards of Cloudcuckoolanders), and has probably gone around the block an innumerable number of times.

Even Pintsize to an extent. Originally he was just a quirky, sociopathic robot with weird fetishes. Now he is just /b/ personified doing anything for attention.

Leo from VG Cats was at first a typical Cloud Cuckoo Lander whom, despite some unusual quirks, still made sense at times. This got worse, much to the discomfort of his co-star, Aeris. Now he is effectively a textbook Ditz.

Web Original

The Angry Video Game Nerd started out as a jaded sort of fellow who would only start dropping F-bombs when the game truly deserved it, and concentrated more on the reviews themselves. As the series continued, the Nerd would collapse into screaming apoplexy at the slightest provocation, game-related or not, and the shows gradually got more and more taken over by movie-like set pieces and Large Ham supporting characters (this was about when Mike Matei got an expanded role).

The Youtube user Benthelooney has suffered this in his videos. Originally, on his old PuffyZillaman4 account, he was consistently calm and laidback, despite several rants. However, enter later half of 2010, and he becomes a lot more loud and aggressive in tone. This is possibly to add effect to his rants however. Another thing that has been flanderized about him, is his opinions. For example: In his "Nickelodeon" salute, he didn't exactly say he hated Rugrats, but he didn't think that it aged well, but it was good for nostalgia purposes, but in a later video, he says he hates it, and that it's not even good for a "nostalgia trip" and was baffled that many people his age love it. The same could be said for his opinions on Rocko's Modern Life and Scooby-Doo. To add to this, he has received another Flanderization, when it comes to his opinion towards Pixar. In his older videos, he enjoyed their first couple of movies but wasn't too happy about their later ones and Pixar winning the Oscars. Now, it has gone to the extreme, of him actually hating Pixar, and thinking that they have ruined animation. He has expressed hate for them in several comments.

He even flat-out ranted on Pixar (He apologized for it later). However, in occasional videos, he realizes this and tries to go back to his 2009-2011 personna in occasional videos. Ben Tannehill (the web-show's creator) himself is pretty much the opposite of the character himself in real-life, as he is actually very nice.

One of the many side-effects of the World Split hitting Ink City was certain characters undergoing this as a sign they were growing increasingly unbalanced. Don, for instance, is a fan of giving and receiving hugs, which he calls 'sugar'. Due to losing all his ink after the Split, he turns bright pink and can't say anything other than "Sugar sugar sugar."

Jake from College Humor's Jake and Amir went from being a regular guy having to deal with Amir's antics to being somewhat of a Jerkass, and Amir became less and less sane.

JonTron was originally an AVGN-ish review show. Similarly to the Nerd's anger, Jon became more and more wacky and less down-to-earth as videos continued. After he quit Game Grumps, the videos became even more wacky as a result of his time there. This has worked out well, as his recent videos are some of the most-liked ones.

A lot of people probably don't realize that the original "Caturday" pictures (now known as LOLCats) were captioned in proper English. They were still funny, because the photos were inherently bizarre, like photos you might see in magazine caption contests. Now it's escalated to the point where any photo of a cat combined with bad enough English is supposedly hilarious.

Hugo, one of Matt Santoro's clones, started out as being mildly stupid, but later became insane.

Miranda of Miranda Sings started out as a fairly believable Stealth Parody of amateur singers on YouTube who are deluded about their talent before her singing, fashion sense, and overall attitude slowly started getting more and more over the top. Compare this to this. Colleen Ballinger, the creator of the character, says she was deliberately exaggerating whatever traits were most derided in the comments section in order to make her more annoying. And due to Poe's Law, some still seem to not immediately get that she's a fictional character.

Sparadrap started out as a Noob in pure form : annoying, not listening to people giving him advice, overestimating his talent and the ego that comes with it all. Overtime, forgetfulness and sheer idiocy became the only reasons he was doing anything wrong. That stupidity led to a tendency to be friendly in situations that called for battle that expanded to other domains, eventually making him into a Stupid GoodMan Child.

Gaea started out as the Audience Surrogate, then hinted that accumulating in-game currency was a bigger priority to her than other things, which makes sense for a new player. Her means of raking in more money have gotten more and more elaborate over time, to the extent that she's now known to be a greedy Manipulative Bastard by any of her acquaintances that are not a Horrible Judge of Character.

At one point, Open Blue's Espartano unit went from ostensibly unisex Tyke Bomb training program to Amazon Brigade factory. Has a bit of Never Live It Down due to the main contributor just happening to prefer badass lolitas, thus inadvertently bringing the other players assume the factuality of said flanderization. They in turn started making Espartano characters using said assumption, resulting in the concept's flanderization. This was cleaned up in v5, when the new unit for the role, the Engelmacht, was explicitly stated to be unisex.

PeabodySam's Garry's Mod tribute to Dino Attack RPG plays this for laughs, with every character oversimplified to their most basic traits. Rex is "a guy who was a dinosaur", Dr. Rex goes from spending three quarters of the RPG as the Big Bad to "a mad science guy who went into a thing that did something and became a dinosaur", Hotwire is a guy who lost a leg, Dust goes fromm a complex anti-hero to "this guy who was really cool and then he died", Kate Bishop is "a girl who cried", and Andrew is some guy who watched a movie with an alien.

Red vs. Blue is a good example of why Flanderization isn't necessarily a bad thing: in very early episodes, the characters are all quirky, but mostly sane enough to function in real life. Within the space of the first season, they grow increasingly zany, with increasingly hilarious results, and it's doubtful the show would have become so popular otherwise.

Donut starts as a somewhat wimpy rookie who is unfortunately assigned pink armor. He at first despises and insists it is "lightish red" but later on seems to embrace that armor, becoming full-fledged flamboyantly Ambiguously Gay (or extremely, extremely Camp Straight, depending on your interpretation). He still wears lightish red armor, though.

Simmons changes from occasionally kissing ass to displaying extremely sycophantic behavior ("You're not only a wonderful leader but also a handsome man, sir!").

Sarge's dislike of Grif progressed to actually trying to kill Grif on a fairly regular basis.

Grif himself started as the most competent member of the Reds with occasional references to slacking off (most likely because his work would have been utter nonsense anyway). This evolved into extreme sloth and gluttony.

Tucker, who talked about "picking up chicks" in the first few episodes, became a literal font of innuendo.

Tex went from a skilled and amoral special forces soldier to a legendarily powerful badass.

Doc. He started out as a conscientious objector but had no true defining behavioral quirks. Quickly he became a useless wimp (to the point that he reveals he ran track in high school because it was the least competitive sport he could find) and pacifist, serving as a hilarious counter-balance to O'Malley's aggressive ranting.

SF Debris delights in taking Star Trek tropes and characters to their extremes. These range from running gags in fandom, such as Janeway's coffee obsession or Troi's bad piloting skills, to total re-imaginings such as:

As Trek's Stock Aesops age naturally over time, The Federation is increasingly depicted as an Orwellian state.

Probably most famous is Chuck's interpretation of Captain Janeway as a supervillain on par with Palpatine and Dr. Wily. This originated with Janeway's inconsistent characterization over the course of the series, when viewers were expected to blindly side with her despite the writers disagreeing over how she would act from week-to-week.

Almost as famous is Harry Kim's sexual confusion and Butt Monkey role. It's worth mention that this and Janeway's mental illness are regarded as Word of Saint Paul by the actors themselves.

Captain Archer as a deranged homeless man who was abducted and put in charge of a starship. His resentment of the Vulcans, a running theme on ENT, has been inflated to cartoon-level paranoia.

Rosalina, in her first two appearances, kept screaming and crying about Luma, and blames the Sun, which she believes is a planet. However, in her current appearances, she became more of a stereotypical ditzy blonde.

Tales of MU does this to gnomes (its version of hobbits) to a certain extent, when comparing the species to the one from Middle-Earth. The latter are respectable to a fault and don't think much of people who travel too much or have adventures - the former literally consider "adventure" a dirty word and take pains to use an Unusual Euphemism.

Hazel: What I mean to say is that she’s an... a lady of wandering interests [...] You know, prone to seek out, ah, random encounters.

In Vaguely Recalling JoJo, Jonathan's signature move is the revolver he uses on Dio when Dio is a vampire. Will A. Zeppeli repeatedly uses the frog punch on his foes. At one point, he does the frog punch on Dio's zombies, and giant fists rain down upon them. The grenade deflection attack is one of Straizo's signature moves.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy